Smooth Company founder Áine Kennedy’s feet have barely touched the ground.
The jet-setting entrepreneur, who has just returned from Japan, has her bags packed for Amsterdam, where her company is set to make a big announcement this week.
Then it’s on to London for an event with Trinny Woodall – “actual Trinny”, as Kennedy clarifies – where the Smooth Company has secured its first UK retail listing in the beauty mogul’s Kings Road store.
“It’s just non-stop at the minute,” Kennedy says. Yet, in between all of that, the bubbly Dubliner manages to squeeze in a trip to The Irish Times office for an interview.
You might have heard some of Kennedy’s story by now. In the middle of the Covid-19 pandemic, she and her grandfather Billy began posting videos on TikTok, quickly earning her a large following on the social media platform. In 2022, the Lucan-based businesswoman launched her first product from her attic, the Smooth Stick, a hair-taming wand that helps keep unruly stray hairs in place.
An overnight success, Kennedy saw a gap in the market and, after a bit of trial and error with manufacturers, delivered the product, capitalising on the profile she built online during the pandemic. The idea had been percolating away for years while she held down jobs in the beauty industry, first as a make-up artist, then as a marketing executive for a make-up brand and other cosmetics companies.
Now with an expanded product range, the Smooth Company has customers in 70 countries around the world and employs eight people in Dublin. Its products are made in Ireland, China, Korea and other Asian countries, a strategic decision, Kennedy says – hinting at commercial nous beyond her 28 years – to mitigate supply chain risks.
It’s also about to move into its first proper headquarters in Rathcoole, Co Dublin – Kennedy dubs it the “Smooth Dream House” – over the coming weeks.
In recognition of her efforts, Big Four accounting firm EY Ireland has named Kennedy as a finalist in the emerging category of this year’s Entrepreneur of the Year awards. She attended the programme’s annual chief executive retreat in Japan late last month.
Kennedy was also crowned young entrepreneur of the year at the Image PwC Businesswoman of the Year awards last year.
It’s certainly a busy time for the Smooth Company. Happily, Kennedy has had plenty of good advice and support in these early years in business. Her father, Barry Kennedy, is the chief executive of Irish Manufacturing Research, the State and industry-funded body charged with solving the most pressing problems at the cutting edge of manufacturing.
“We’re very much in a growth phase at the moment,” says Kennedy, who has news to share. This week, the Smooth Company became the first Irish cosmetics line to be stocked in the Netherlands at De Bijenkorf, the high-end department store chain owned by Brown Thomas Arnotts parent Selfridges.
Kennedy says the opportunity to list her products at the chain’s eight Dutch stores arose organically, separate from the Smooth Company’s existing relationship with Brown Thomas Arnotts. “But they can see our sales in Brown Thomas,” she says. “We’re one of the bestselling brands in the beauty section.”
Talking to Kennedy, it’s clear that 2025 is something of an inflection point for the Smooth Company. Being a predominantly online enterprise has plenty of advantages for a company with more than 150 million organic TikTok views, not least on the cost side, she says. She has only lately intensified her brand’s efforts to secure retail listings, something about which Kennedy believes it pays to be choosy.
“We’re focusing on international expansion,” she says. “We’ve done really well here in Ireland to date. We’re predominantly an ecommerce brand, so we do a lot of [sales] online ... but now we’re focused on getting into brick-and-mortar stores across the water.”
I will do anything to protect the brand. I’m not thinking of myself any more. I have eight staff now. They have mortgages to be paid and kids to be fed
There must be some temptation to open up her own physical retail shop. “Never say never,” Kennedy says. “But there’s nothing in the pipeline for a store anytime soon.
“We do a pop-up shop every Christmas in Liffey Valley. That does really, really well. For me, I’m focused on growing the brand, and how I’ve grown the brand to date is with strategic partnerships, and that’s enabled us to be really nimble, really agile and keep the business lean.”
Reports of the death of retail are greatly exaggerated, Kennedy believes. The Smooth Company is the “number one haircare brand in Dublin Airport”, for example, and is sold on 432 Aer Lingus routes. “We’re getting in front of all those international passengers who might have seen us online, but they didn’t want to pay the shipping fee. So, I think it’s really important to have both.”
For a business incorporated just three years ago, the Smooth Company has had to clear some big hurdles. There is, to be sure, a darker side to operating principally in the wild west of the internet and social media.
“Last year, our whole site got pirated,” Kennedy says. “I got a message on Instagram from a girl, who said to me: ‘Just so you know, someone is using your TikTok video.’ It was a video of my grandad doing my hair, and they were running it as an Instagram ad.”
The advertisement linked to a fake website that had cloned much of the Smooth Company’s imagery and photography – a tricky business, given that Kennedy’s face is on some of the brand’s products. “They just edited out Smooth Stick and my face.”
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In a “state of panic”, a tearful Kennedy posted a video on TikTok, “just letting everyone know to be careful”. Off the back of that, Kennedy received emails from people in the tech and wider business world, including Meta employees and a senior executive in a big Irish cosmetics group.
“This was mid-meltdown,” she says. “But she told us this had happened to them, and these are the steps to get it taken down. Then, within 24 hours, the [fake] website was gone, taken down.”
Exactly what the cyber pirates wanted is unclear. “Maybe they were just trying to get card details. I don’t know,” she says. But it was a “stressful” period for her and the team. “You don’t learn this in college.”
She credits the resolution of the crisis – mismanagement of which would likely have had significant reputational implications for her brand – to the “power of being vulnerable” online and being honest when something goes wrong.
Another important lesson Kennedy has had to learn the hard way is when to back yourself against a bigger fish. In the world of high street retail, they don’t come much bigger than Penneys owner Primark, against which the Smooth Company launched High Court proceedings in late 2023 over an alleged brand infringement dispute.
Without going into too much detail, Kennedy said the notion of taking on the retail giant was “scary” but not a difficult decision. In a moment of foresight, she had registered the trademark – the “best €140 I ever spent” – even before the brand was launched. Still, Kennedy plays down the surely daunting possibility of trading legal blows with a retail heavyweight.
“I will do anything to protect the brand,” she says. “I’m not thinking of myself any more. I have eight staff now. They have mortgages to be paid and kids to be fed.”
Kennedy herself has close to 84,000 followers on TikTok and 15,000 on Instagram. Yet, although she’s friends with many influencers and maintains business relationships with them, she doesn’t call herself an influencer. “I’m definitely not a natural,” she says of her social media presence, which offers glimpses behind the scenes at her home life and the day-to-day running of the business.
It can be “scary”, particularly for young women, to put themselves out there like that, Kennedy admits. “I know it’s for the good of the business, and it’s going to grow the business and, like I said, I employ people now, so I’m going to have to get over my fear.”
Still, social media can be a tough place for women and their body image in the age of Photoshop and filters.
“I also think this has been an issue for years,” says Kennedy. “Like, if you go back years ago, it was even worse in the magazines, the shaming of women. You couldn’t be skinny enough ever. I think, now, to flip it on its head, we’re seeing a lot more body positivity ... Everything’s changing so fast. I think we’re doing better now than probably a few years ago.”
Talking to Kennedy, her commitment to the business is crystal clear. She’s not interested in taking on investment just yet, preferring to continue “bootstrapping” the Smooth Company for as long as she can.
The Original Smooth Company Ltd, the entity behind the brand and its operations, is set to file its 2024 accounts with the Companies Registration Office in the coming days. Detailed information about revenues is absent from the 2023 filings, which otherwise do show a healthy jump in annual profits in the company’s second full trading year to €215,000 from just under €37,000 in 2022.
Kennedy is tight-lipped about what she expects the 2024 figures to look like. She ventures that the Smooth Company “did triple” its 2023 revenues last year, although she’s keeping mum on the details for now. The company has been “profitable” from the start, she says, all of which “we reinvest back into the business”.
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Financially, the company and its early successes haven’t really changed her lifestyle. She hasn’t, for example, bought a house yet. “I think I’ve put myself on the back burner and put the company first. That’s my only focus at the moment.”
Even her extracurricular activities are, to a large extent, tied to work. Many of her friends have moved away to warmer climes like Australia – where the Smooth Company’s products became available last year on the Irish-owned cosmetics platform Her Place – and Dubai. “I went to Australia, but that was kind of work and pleasure.”
The pace must be hectic. “My screen time is outrageous,” says Kennedy, who mentioned earlier that she used the taxi journey into the city centre as working time. “I’m constantly refreshing my emails, Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn. I don’t have a work-life balance at the moment. At the minute, I’m trying to, like, ride the wave. We’re in a growth phase, so I’m giving it everything.”
With some big announcements in the offing, it doesn’t look like the pace is going to slow down for Kennedy any time soon.
A misconception about the Smooth Company’s name, she says, is that it only makes hair smoothing products. “That’s not the reason we came up with it. The reason behind the brand name is that we want our products to help our customers’ day run more smoothly.”
With that in mind, Kennedy believes there is plenty more for the company to do in the world of haircare, with the Smooth Company set to release two new products – a detangling brush and spray – in July. But “we’re keeping it broad”, she says, hinting at possible diversification soon.
As for her goals, the young entrepreneur is keeping them lofty. “I heard a fact the other day that only 83 women [founders] in the UK had grown their revenues to over £50 million,” says Kennedy. “So that’s my target.”
CV
Name: Aine Kennedy
Job: Founder, Smooth Company
Age: 28
Lives: Lucan, Dublin
Hobbies: Travel and gym
Something you might expect: Loves all things related to hair, make-up, beauty and social media.
Something you might find surprising: She is qualified as a lifeguard.
